Inside Israel: The Faiths, the People, and the Modern Conflicts of the World's Holiest Land

book: Inside Israel: The Faiths, the People, and the Modern Conflicts of the World's Holiest Land

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Inside Israel: The...

	Inside Israel: The Faiths, the People, and the Modern Conflicts of the World's Holiest Land Da Capo Press, 2002 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to crescendo, bringing with it the worst violence in the Middle East in decades. Now Inside Israel helps make sense of the region's longstanding travails, detailing the past, present, and future of a place that has been holy to Jews, Christians, and Arabs for thousands of years. Organized into three sections?the History, a Day in the Life, and the Peace Process?the collection includes nonfiction pieces by a distinguished roster of writers, historians, journalists, and scholars. David Grossman offers a portrait of Palestinians on the West Bank, Saul Bellow captures the "length and depth" of Jerusalem's history while Robert Stone considers the capital's future, and Hendrik Hertzberg analyzes the current conflict and how the U.S. needs to be involved in a peaceful solution. Other writings include contributions by David Remnick, Karen Armstrong, David Grossman, Saul Bellow, Robert Kaplan, Robert Stone, David Shipler, Deborah Sontag, Anthony Lewis, and many others. The state of this holy, contested land makes this is an essential book for everyone seeking new levels of understanding about the place whose fate, now more than ever, impacts the entire world.

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An interesting book

This is a collection of fourteen essays and excerpts from books about the Arab-Israeli conflict. There are a number of different opinions presented, and that's good. But I think too many ideas are overlooked.

David Shipler starts with an overview of the conflict. Next is Karen Armstrong. She appears to sneeringly dismiss any claims by others to Muslim land, but is all sweetness when she begs all reasonable people to share their non-Muslim land with the Muslims. And she discusses the power of "myth" here. But this misses the point. It is absurd to think that the five million Jews of Israel would happily agree, in the name of equality, to be oppressed by the Arabs! And even more absurd to claim that the only reason the Jews haven't been reasonable enough to surrender is the power of some myth. Human rights are no myth.

Paul Johnson supplies a very reasonable discussion of the history of the establishment of the State of Israel. Next is Meron Benvenisti, who has the same problem as Armstrong: what is Arab is Arab, what's Jewish is negotiable. After that, David Grossman does an excellent job of documenting Arab hatred of Israel. But he's somewhat biased. He shows that the Jews wanted the Land. Now the Arabs want it. What symmetry! He ignores the fact that there is a big difference. The Arabs have millions of square kilometers. The Jews are willing to let the Arabs keep it all. Meanwhile, I'd say that Arabs who insist on grabbing all the Jewish land are being just a little bit greedy.

We then see an excellent and thoughtful article by David Horovitz on what living in Israel has been like. And a silly article by Deborah Sontag. Sontag's article includes some interviews of Arabs. Out of context, it would be pure propaganda. In this book, the other articles provide a little balance.

Adina Hoffman has an interesting article in which she shows the difficulty of tracing house ownership. This article made me even more convinced that the rights to a house should never be "returned" to those who never actually owned it. Do we really want those who claim to be heirs (or descendants, or friends) of Jews or Arabs who had their land swiped in Libya, Poland, and Israel to be given houses they never owned, never improved, and never paid property taxes on? Hoffman does not come up with this question herself, but I sure did.

Saul Bellow doesn't want Israel to fight. Well, that is fine. It's not that bad an idea; those who fight can get hurt. What he wants people to do when they get attacked, however, is not clear. Nor is it clear how he'll stop people from fighting back. Israel is not the only nation in the world that will ever have to decide whether to defend itself or not.

P. J. O'Rourke makes a couple of good points. He says that reality is not a zero-sum game. That is, people make something of what they have. Both sides can prosper. On the other hand, politics is zero-sum. That is, the argument is made that what is good for one side is necessarily bad for the other.

Uri Savir tells of trying to negotiate. But over what? I think there's always someone you can find who will want to lay claim to what is yours. But unless you get to negotiate over what is theirs too, I think "negotiations" are going to be counterproductive. The land-poor Israelis will feel cheated because it is their land that will be stolen. The Arabs will feel cheated because even though the principle has been established that they are entitled to steal Jewish land, they won't get all of it. So I was unimpressed with Savir.

Anthony Lewis has an interesting article in which he doubts that a new Arab state will benefit anyone. I have to agree with that assessment. The fact that we disagree politically does not change that.

Ed Said says that the Arab and Jewish narratives are incompatible. He implies that the Jews are wrong but will not change their minds. But I think the whole idea of narratives is silly. If we want to get our history right, no one is stopping us. There is one truth, not many truths. And he pretends to be realistic and moderate when he proposes to let evil Israel exist, as long as it ceases to be a refuge for Jews (he demands to get rid of the Law of Return). Isn't that the least the grateful Jews can do if the Arabs agree not to crush them? Well, no, it isn't. There are over 5 million Jews in Israel. And if we are to have peace, they will need to have rights too.

The book finishes with an article by Robert Stone, who makes the obvious statement that the Arabs won't leave unless forced to do so. That's a truly stupid note to end on. After all, the Arabs have millions of square kilometers to live on. The Middle Eastern Jews are restricted to Israel. If any side is going to be bought out of the Levant in peacetime, it will be the Arabs.

There are some interesting excerpts and articles in this book, but there's much better material out there.

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